The article notes that some noted the timing of the call - after Vick has had a stellar season with the Eagles rather than right after the signing. No doubt if Vick hadn't been doing well, there would have been no call later in the season, either.

Also, how about their victims who either pay with their lives or are damaged for a lifetime?

NBC’s Peter King reported the call during “Football Night in America” on Sunday.

“I talked to Jeffrey Lurie, the owner of the Eagles this week, and he said he was surprised to pick up the phone one day and Barack Obama calls him to praise the Philadelphia Eagles for signing Vick and giving him a second chance,” King said from NBC’s Rockefeller Plaza studios. “Lurie told me that the president was passionate about the fact that it’s rarely a level playing field for prisoners once they leave jail. And he said the message was, what the Eagles had done with Vick was important for society,” said King.